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Retro: 4 Network Prime Time Line Up - April 1955 - Sat. & Sun.

-------------


Prime Time Line Up, using NYC edition. I believe these are all network prime time shows.

2 - WCBS-TV CBS
4 - WRCA NBC
5 - WABD Dumont
7 - WABC-TV ABC


Saturday April 2

6:30 2 Man Behind The Badge - A Vermont attorney tracks down a killer. Wendell Holmes
4 Range Rider - A freight agent is the victim of an extortion scheme. Jack Mahoney, Dick Jones
7 Film Drama - Two Czech immigrants have trouble finding an American sponsor. Richard Carlson, Hugo Haas

7pm 2 Gene Autry - Gene battles a sabatage ring and teaches a spoiled boy a lesson.
4 Reingold Theater - Henry Fonda, hosts. Keefe Basselle stars in "A Matter of Courage."
5 Terry & The Pirates - A UN doctor inspecting rice shipments is kidnapped in China. John Baer.
7 Tomorrow - Youth. "Seeing into The Past for The Future."

7:30 2 Beat The Clock - Bud Collyer
4 Show Wagon - Horace Heidt and his troupe present "A Salute to the Services." From Washington D.C.
5 Joe Palooka - On his way to entertain the troops in Korea, Joe is captured by the Red Chinese. Joe Kirkwood, Jr.
7 Dangerous Assignment - Steve is assigned to capture a brief case filled with confidential papers.

8pm 2 Jackie Gleason - In a "Honeymooners" episode, Kramden and Norton are filled with ideas. Audrey Meadows, Art Carney
4 Mickey Rooney - Mickey tells the giant's side of the story in "Jack and The Beanstalk." Joey Forman
5 Movie - "The Soha Conspiracy." To raise money for a church, a group of young people organize a concert.
7 Gloria Swanson - An eccentric uncle is over-generous with other people's money. Edgar Buchanan

8:30 4 This Is Hollywood - Queenie and her cohorts are out to capture jewel thieves. Mitzi Green, Virginia Gibson
7 Dottie Mack - Music. Dottie, Bob Braun and Colin Mole pantomime to records.

9pm 2 Two for The Money
4 Imogene Coca - A little girl scout visits the newlyweds. Hal March, Bibi Osterwald, David Burns
7 Boris Carloff - The little town of Mistal is being terrorized by the mysterious M'sieu Zed.

9:30 2 My Favorite Husband - During a parlor game, the men pick Liz as the woman they'd most like to be on a desert island with. Joan

Caulfeld, Barry Nelson
4 Jimmy Durante - Jimmy's guest is dashing actor Peter Lawford.
7 Ozark Jubilee - Tonight's guest: Comedian Smiley Burnette.

10pm 2 Professional Father - The Wilson family is all dressed up for a social event, except for Twig, in a tee shirt and jeans. Steve Dunne, Ted

Marc
4 George Gobel - George takes his wife Alice to visit the neighbors. Jeff Donnell, Peggy King
5 Wrestling Workouts
7 Cavalcade of Stars - A college professor clashes with a Washington correspondent over his fiancee. Thomas Mitchell, Joan Evans.

10:30 2 All in Fun - Charley Applewhite's guests are the dancing Step Brothers, the Fontaine Sisters and comedians Al Fisher and Lou Marks.
4 Your Hit Parade - Gisele MacKenzie, Dorothy Collins and Snooky Larson salute the top seven records. (Color)
5 Call The Play - Mel Allen
7 Foreign Intrigue - Secret agents charter a night plane to Switzerland. Gereld Mahr

10:45 5 Wrestling


-----------------

Sunday, April 3, 1955

5pm 2 Omnibus - Alistair Cooke hosts Homer's "Iliad." Dorothy Hart, Alexander Scourby, Frederick Tassere
4 Hall of Fame - Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys try to capture Fort Ticonderoga. William Bishop
7 Super Circus - From Chicago's Three Rings. Claude Kirchner, Mary Hartline

5:30 4 Capt. Gallant - Gallant and the Legionnaires try to track down the gang that robbed a caravan. Buster Crabbe, Caffy Crabbe

6pm 4 Meet The Press
5 Sunday Supplement (Color)
7 Hollywood Adventure Time

6:30 2 You Are There - Walter Cronkite hosts "The Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad." Jeff York, Harris Brown
4 Roy Rogers - Two desperados blow up a train.
7 My Hero - Benzeblossom becomes a brash, breezy salesman. Bob Cummings

7pm 2 Lassie - Grandpa is suspicious of an itinerant tinker who stops at the farm. Tommy Rettig, Jan Clayton, George Cleveland
4 People Are Funny - A woman solicits signatures for a strange petition. Art Linkletter
5 Heart of The City - A woman marries a cripple out of pity only to find he's lied about his condition. Pat McVey
7 You Asked for It - An undercover cameraman, a children's car race, performing dogs. Art Baker

7:30 2 Jack Benny - Should Jack go to a fancy dress ball or appear on Groucho Marx's quiz show? Groucho Marx plays himself.
4 Mr. Peepers - Mr. Peepers is invited to speak to a garden club. Wally Cox, Marian Lorne
5 Opera Cameos - Verdi's "La Traviata." Beverly Sills, Paul Knowles
7 Playhouse - A steamship captain robbs his passengers and leaves them on a desert island. Brian Keith, John Doucette, Jean Howell

8pm 2 Toast of The Town - Ed Sullivan's guests: Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., Dorothy Dandridge, Julius LaRosa
4 Comedy Hour - Phil Harris presents jokes and jukebox hits with "The Country Fair." Tennessee Ernie Ford, Kitty Kallen, Dave Brubeck
5 Movie - "The Girl on The Pier." A detective takes a break while on a lecture tour. Veronica Hurst, Ron Randall
7 Stu Erwin - Comedy. "Private Enterprise." Jane Collyer.

8:30 7 News Conference

9pm 2 G.E. Theater - A lecturer is tricked by her agent into going to Texas on a tour. Myrna Loy, Robert Preston
4 TV Playhouse - A man seeks the perfect method to kill his wife so he can marry a young actress. John Baragrey, Julie Fallansbee
5 Star Playhouse - A writer masquerades as a basketball coach to get the story of a gang of hoodlums. Preston Foster
7 Walter Winchell

9:15 7 The Stork Club - Sherman Billingsley welcomes singers Lisa Kirk and Jill Carey.

9:30 2 Stage 7 - A small town girl rents an apartment previously occupied by an astronomer. Diana Lynn
5 Life Begins at 80

10pm 2 Appointment with Adventure - Two friends go cave exploring but one of them loves the other man's wife. Louis Jordan, Claude Dauphin
4 Loretta Young - An aspiring model works as a garage mechanic where a model agency owner keeps his car. Craig Stevens
5 Movie - "The Young in Heart." An eccentric family rescues a wealthy woman from a train wreck. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Janet Gaynor
7 Break The Bank - Bert Parks

10:30 2 What's My Line - John Daly, hosts. Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen
4 Bob Cummings - Bob lets a TV Guide executive beat him in golf to get a photo assignment. Rosemary DeCamp, Ann B. Davis, Dwayne Hickman
7 Paris Precinct - The body of a woman is found floating in the Seine. Louis Jordan, Claude Dauphin. Filmed in Paris.
 
6pm 4 Meet The Press
5 Sunday Supplement (Color)
7 Hollywood Adventure Time

Is that color show on ch. 5 a mistaken listing? From what I've read, the Du Mont network never did any color shows. Did WABD have local color capabilities by this time?
 
That Jack Benny episode is a classic. Jack disguises himself
to be a contestant on "You Bet Your Life," manages to say
the secret word, telephone, by saying something about how
you can "tell a phony," then loses on the big question: What is
Jack Benny's real age? Groucho kept a copy of that show but
wouldn't show it unless he was asked. I think it may be in the
public domain now; I'm not sure.

I'm not sure either if he was on the show that night but at the
time Fred Allen was a regular panelist on "What's My Line?". He
had replaced Steve Allen in September 1954 when Steve left to
move "The Tonight Show" from Channel 4 in New York to the NBC
network; Fred remained on "Line" until his death on March 17, 1956.
 
Oldschooler asks about Sunday Supplement at 6pm on Dumont Channel 5 being in color. It could be a mistake. This is the only program in the entire listings in color on a channel other than NBC 4. I'd wonder why Dumont would chose this unimportant program to be the one color show on the schedule... or maybe it was only a Channel 5 show, not seen on the network.

As it was, NBC had only four shows in color this week: Your Hit Parade, Producers' Showcase, Best of Broadway and Norby, a sitcom. There were no color shows on CBS, ABC or the independent stations.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
oldschooler1 said:
6pm 4 Meet The Press
5 Sunday Supplement (Color)
7 Hollywood Adventure Time

Is that color show on ch. 5 a mistaken listing? From what I've read, the Du Mont network never did any color shows. Did WABD have local color capabilities by this time?

I sincerely doubt it, it could possibly be a typo. Channel 5, from what I could tell, didn't have any kind of color capacity that I know of until fall 1965, when they introduced color film, tape and slide capability (the film chains being RCA TK-27, which were used into the 1980's); though the last NYC commercial indie station to introduce such color (WOR-TV, in 1960, was the first to have color film and slide capability; followed in spring 1965 by WPIX; what was by then WNDT Channel 13 didn't air any color to speak of until 1967, the last NYC-area VHF to do so), Channel 5 was the first to offer all year-round live studio color, starting in fall 1966 when they acquired Norelco PC-70 cameras.
 
That Jack Benny episode is a classic. Jack disguises himself
to be a contestant on "You Bet Your Life," manages to say
the secret word, telephone, by saying something about how
you can "tell a phony," then loses on the big question: What is
Jack Benny's real age? Groucho kept a copy of that show but
wouldn't show it unless he was asked. I think it may be in the
public domain now; I'm not sure.

HERE is the skit on YouTube - about 5 min long.
 
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